


I Left My Home Still as a Child

by Qais



Series: Where Human Beings Grow Human Souls [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Crying, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, heed the warnings please, set after Dick leaves to be Nightwing but before Jason dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 18:17:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17411834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qais/pseuds/Qais
Summary: Dick goes home.





	I Left My Home Still as a Child

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Greg Holden's song, "Lost Boy." I associate it heavily with the Batfam, but really with Bruce particularly. Check it out, you'll see why. 
> 
> Please mind the warnings, there are no graphic discussions here (I don't think), but it's quite clear what has happened to Dick, and if you aren't comfortable reading that I would advise against it.

Dick isn’t really thinking about it when he goes. If he had been in his right mind maybe he would’ve stopped to take stock of the situation, convinced himself out of it before scrapping the plan altogether.

As it is, he’s not in his right mind at all, and he settles into the backseat of the taxi cab, his breath rattling in his chest, and rattles off the address of the manor. Everything is aching, and he can feel the sting of tears in his eyes, though they don’t spill over the course of the hours-long taxi drive.

When he exits the cab and tries to pay the driver, the man, kind faced and aging, waves him off. Says something about doing good work and helping out an officer of the law. Dick smiles tiredly and scrubs at the corner of his eyes as some tears finally leak out. With a final nod, he shuts the door and turns towards the manor. In his memory (because he hasn’t been back home in months, fuck) the manor had become an imposing structure, insurmountable and reminiscent of every single fight and argument he’d had with Bruce while within those walls.

Dick realizes quite suddenly that it’s the middle of the day, and the likelihood of Bruce actually being there is close to nil. He almost can’t decide how he feels about it but the hollowness in his chest calls him a liar and tells him he knows exactly how he feels about not having his dad there. His dad. Ha. 

Shaking it off, still in a haze of fuzziness that he hasn’t been able to escape, he walks up to the front step and keys in the code. The door opens without ceremony but Dick feels rushed with a wave of emotion. The entrance is still familiar, and the smell is still the same. He can’t explain exactly why, but he’d been afraid that some part of him wouldn’t recognize the place anymore. 

Quietly, without so much as a whisper of displaced air, he toes off his shoes and starts climbing the stairs. His ribs and legs ache in protest, and he vaguely feels the sensation of the stitches in his back ripping open, but it all feels removed, like it’s happening to a different body, not his own. 

With the practice of years he climbs slowly, and turns immediately away from the wing of the house that had his room. He goes towards Bruce’s. The door is closed but Dick tries the doorknob and it opens easily. The drapes are pushed aside and sunlight is streaming in, but the room is empty. 

Dick feels his chest crack open, can’t help the stream of tears that rush down his cheeks, and he lays down on the side of the bed that Bruce never slept on. He remember being 9 and having nightmares, getting up the courage to go to Bruce. 

Being 12 and feeling scared about Bruce’s injuries. 

15 and scared about himself, and his own future.

And now he’s 21, painfully lonely and scared, and he wants his dad more than he can explain. The sobs wrack through his body and he know that he’s probably leaking blood through his uniform onto the bed sheets but he can’t stop.

He falls asleep like that, some minutes later, crying and clutching at the sheets on the bed, willing himself to stop needing his father.

\---

The thing that wakes him isn’t the sensation of his clothes being removed, his stitches being fixed, his skin being run over softly with a washcloth. Alfred’s face, had Dick been awake to see it, would have surprised Dick with the force of the sadness in his eyes. The worry. Alfred, with the wiry strength that surprised everyone who ever saw it, picked Dick up and changed the sheets, dressed him in Bruce’s pyjamas, and sighed.

Bruce stands aside and watches, his hands shaking, as they had been since he’d returned home to find his son still in his uniform, bleeding out sluggishly. He tries to help Alfred initially but they both stop and stare at how violently Bruce’s hands are shaking. With kind and infinitely sad eyes Alfred leads him to the couch, and bids him to sit and watch, knowing that Bruce will not leave.

After Alfred finishes and lifts the pile of bloody laundry, shutting the door behind him, Bruce stands on weak legs and walks over. Dick is pale, and the tear tracks that Alfred had wiped off his cheeks have been replaced with more. He is still crying in his sleep. There is something vicious in Bruce’s chest, screaming for blood, asking for vengeance. But Dick had not reported anything to Barbara or Alfred, or even to Jason, before coming here. And he’d come straight to Bruce’s room to sob his heart out. It was clear that vengeance wasn’t what he was looking for. 

The soft touch in his hair is what finally wakes Dick, and he blinks the tears out of his eyes to find Bruce crouched next to the bed. “Hey chum,” the voice is soft and deep and Dick flashes back to the innumerable tears that that voice had soothed. It doesn’t work this time and Dick begins crying harder, until he’s completely sobbing. “Shh, shh, Dick, I’m here son.” Bruce gathers Dick in his arms and holds him close, pressing Dick’s cheek to his chest as he used to do when Dick barely came up to his waist. Dick cries harder and Bruce lifts himself onto the bed and begins rocking Dick back and forth, whispering soft reassurances and smoothing his hand down Dick’s back.

The sobs continue wracking Dick’s body, and he gasps for breath even as he clutches his fingers tighter into Bruce’s t-shirt. “I just- she didn’t listen- I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-” the words are gasps of air and Bruce can’t make any sense of them. Doesn’t know enough about Dick’s situation in Blud to even begin to know what he means. Until, “I said no, I said no, and she didn’t-” and Dick breaks off with a gasp even as Bruce’s grip slackens momentarily in shock. Bruce grits his teeth and holds Dick closer and prays that, for the sake of whoever his son is speaking about, that this doesn’t mean what he fears. 

“Dick, chum-” Bruce breaks off with gritted teeth as Dick’s sobs grow more violent, and a baseline whimper holds resident in his son’s throat. 

“I wasn’t- so much had happened B, I wasn’t-” and Dick is whispering now, soft hiccups of breath punctuating the pain in his voice. “She just- she didn’t even care that I- I said no, but she just, right there on the rooftop, she just used me like I was- like I wasn’t even a person-” and Bruce is newly horrified, his chest beating a pounding rhythm and his blood lighting on fire. “I didn’t want her to touch me,” Dick’s voice is even quieter, and Bruce clutches his child to his chest in a sad attempt to protect him from the pain he’s already facing. “She did it anyway, Dad, she just-” and he breaks off, his sobs getting louder once more.

“Dick, son, what do you need me to do?” Bruce asks, his voice fierce even as his heart cracks. “Anything Dick, please, what do you need?”

“Can I stay?” The voice is barely even a whisper and Bruce keens when he hears it. 

“Dick, this is your home, you never have to ask, never, I don’t care what happens,” and Bruce hears the raw truth of that even as he says it. “You never need to ask Dick. This is your home, I am your father, I would give anything,” the bitterness sharpens his voice with the knowledge that nothing could take away his son’s pain. 

“I would give anything to see you safe Dick, anything at all.”


End file.
